Last government ‘failed to provide OBR with information required under the law’

The last UK government did not provide the budget watchdog with information they should have done “under the law” ahead of the March financial statement, according to the organisation’s chief.

Richard Hughes, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said he thought there may have been a “misunderstanding” about the law, when speaking to MPs on the Treasury Committee on Tuesday.

Last week the OBR confirmed that the last government “did not provide” them with all available information at Jeremy Hunt’s last budget in March this year.

‘Spending pressures’

They said they had uncovered £9.5 billion in spending pressures they were not made aware of ahead of the fiscal statement in March, and said that its judgement on spending would have been “materially different” had it had access to this information.

Mr Hughes told the committee that he asked the Treasury earlier this year “what were you aware about in terms of departmental pressures at the time we were putting together the March Budget?”.

He added: “The short answer was there were about £9.5 billion worth of net pressure on departments’ budgets which they did not disclose to us (…) which under the law and under the act they should have done.”

Asked later in the session whether he thought the Treasury broke the law, Mr Hughes said: “They didn’t provide all of the information that we required to do our forecast.

“Now, there is always information that is relevant to the work that we do which we would like to have.

“In this case, this was a material amount of information which would have led to a materially different forecast had we had it.”

‘Systemic failure’

He said that there had been a “systemic failure” in the last forecast and potentially a “misunderstanding”.

He said there may “have been a misunderstanding of how the law ought to be interpreted.

“There is no doubt in our minds that had that information been provided we would have had a materially different judgement.”

When asked about whether the Government thought former ministers had withheld information, Downing Street said on Tuesday afternoon that “civil servants advise and ministers decide”.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “At the Budget last week, the OBR published a review of of the issues surrounding the £22 billion black hole and how it came about and the Government has accepted all the recommendations made by the OBR, including recommendations around the previous processes being too informal.

“Now, obviously I can’t speak to previous administrations. But the general principle is that officials’ engagement with institutions like the OBR is obviously on the basis of ministerial policy positions.

“And you’ve got the Chancellor’s previous words that, in the end, civil servants advise and ministers decide.”